AD Portal Webinar Series
The AD Knowledge Portal webinar series is an opportunity to discuss data, analysis, and tools for the study of Alzheimer’s disease generated through the National Institute on Aging’s Translational Research Program. It features speakers from the AMP-AD Target Discovery Program and associated consortia.
AlzPED | Apr 30, 2024
AlzPED | Apr 30, 2024 12:00 PM EST
Positive findings from testing therapeutics in AD animal models are often not translated to effective treatments due to the poor methodological rigor and inadequate reporting practices of therapeutic efficacy studies. The Alzheimer’s Disease Preclinical Efficacy Database (AlzPED), developed by the NIA, is a searchable and publicly available knowledgebase that prioritizes and promotes the use of rigorous methodology to ameliorate this translation gap in AD therapy development. Through a checklist of experimental design elements – the Rigor Report Card – AlzPED highlights reporting recommendations and standards while providing a practical tool that enables the planning of rigorous therapeutic studies in animals. Evaluation of Rigor Report Cards demonstrates significant under-reporting of critical elements of methodology such as power calculation, blinding, randomization, balancing for sex, inclusion/exclusion criteria, these being reported by fewer than 35% of the 1400 curated studies. These deficiencies in reporting critical elements of methodology diminish the scientific rigor, reproducibility, and translational value of preclinical studies. Rigorous experimental design and transparent reporting are essential to inform future research, science policies, and successful clinical trials. Adopting a standardized set of best practices like those proposed by AlzPED can improve the predictive power of preclinical studies in AD animal models and promote the effective translation of drug testing data to the clinic. Registration for the AlzPED webinar is now available.
MARMO-AD | January 30, 2024
Drs. Afonso Silva and Stacey Rizzo introduced MARMO-AD, a new Open Science consortium that is studying gene-edited marmoset models carrying genetic risk for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and wild-type genetically diverse aging marmosets from birth throughout their lifespan, using non-invasive longitudinal assessments. These include characterizing the genetic, molecular, functional, behavioral, cognitive, and pathological features of aging and AD. The goals of MARMO-AD are to bridge the rodent to human translational gap by investigating primate-specific mechanisms that contribute to the pathogenesis of AD, as well as utilize the sophisticated behavioral repertoire and higher order cognitive functions of the marmosets to evaluate the efficacy of novel therapeutics with the potential to treat and prevent AD and related dementias.
Biochem GWAS | February 23, 2023
In this webinar, speakers Dr. Mariet Allen, Dr. Joseph Reddy, and Stephanie Oatman from the lab of Dr. Nilufer Ertekin-Taner discuss their work published in Molecular Neurodegeneration (https://doi.org/10.1186/s13024-022-00592-2). They sought to identify genetic variants that influence the levels and solubility of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) related proteins including Amyloid-β (Aβ) 40, Aβ42, tau, phospho-tau, and APOE in the brain. Using a novel approach of deep brain biochemical endophenotype GWAS, they identified significant associations at seven novel loci and the APOE locus. They found the variants and implicated genes at these loci also associate with multiple AD-related measures, regulate gene expression, have cell-type specific enrichment, and roles in brain health and other neuropsychiatric diseases. Interestingly, although all the biochemical measures they tested reflect proteins core to AD pathology, their results strongly suggest that each have unique genetic architecture and biological pathways that influence their specific biochemical states in the AD brain. View the recording and corresponding dataset.
AD Knowledge Portal Technical Workshop
The annual immersion workshop introduced the AD Knowledge Portal infrastructure, how to find data and metadata, and how to download and join data in preparation for downstream analyses. View the recording and workshop material on Synapse.
Microglial Profiling | Sep 6, 2022
Drs. Nilüfer Ertekin-Taner, Mariet Allen, and Xue Wang discuss microglial profiling data from the The Mayo Clinic Microglial Profiling Study (MCMPS) and the related paper entitled “Transcriptional landscape of human microglia implicates age, sex, and APOE-related immunometabolic pathway perturbations.”
View the webinar recording and corresponding presentation slides
TREAT-AD | Drs. Leal, Ayoubi, and Axtman
The Emory-Sage-SGC TREAT-AD center takes an open-science approach to promoting the focus on under-studied AD genes and proteins. The Center provides packages of information and reagents specific to targets to encourage their research as therapeutic AD targets by the research community. In this webinar, Drs. Riham Ayoubi and Alison Axtman discuss strategies and methods for the selection of adequate cell lines for antibody characterization and the assembly and annotation of the AD Informer Set to enable research of targets identified by the AD consortia. You can read more about the initiative and watch the webinar recording.
Conversations with MODEL-AD | Dr. Gregory Carter
The Model Organism Development and Evaluation for Late-onset Alzheimer’s Disease (MODEL-AD) consortium discussed their goals, including the development of new models based on recent human genetics, the alignment of AD pathophysiology in mouse models and human studies, the staging of disease progression, and preclinical testing based on translatable biomarkers. View the webinar recording.
Dr. Gregory Carter is an Associate Professor at The Jackson Laboratory, Bar Harbor, ME. He combines genetic, genomic, imaging, and other data resources to understand the causes and progression of Alzheimer’s disease.
Dr. Ihab Hajjar on the M2OVE-AD Emory Vascular Study
Dr. Hajjar is a neuroscientist and an Associate Professor of Medicine in the Departments of Neurology and Medicine (Geriatrics). His research is focused on the link between hypertension and vascular disease with brain health including cognitive performance, cerebrovascular function. In particular, he is studying the effects of antihypertensive medications that modulate the renin angiotensin system on both prevention of cognitive decline and as potential therapeutic modalities for early dementia.
Dying young at an old age: Assembling Proteomics for predicting and protecting against cognitive decline
Dr. Nir Barzilai, Institute for Aging Research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the Director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for the Biology of Human Aging Research and of the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Nathan Shock Centers of Excellence in the Basic Biology of Aging.
Lessons Learned of Mice (and Men): Developing the next generation of AD mouse models
Andrea J. Tenner, PhD is leading the investigation of the role of complement activation and subsequent inflammation in Alzheimer’s disease. Frank A. LaFerla, PhD developed a novel approach to create a triple transgenic model of AD (3xTg-AD) to better model neuropathology.